That’s some mighty fine street theater, kids. Now snap out of it and buy our book. After all, it is Cyber Monday and we’ve got an urban myth to perpetuate. Link below, because WordPress won’t let us put it in the photo caption.

(Amazon link to our book. Or just buy it in the right column, whatever. In fact, the latter is better. A bigger cut for us, and we’ll include the e-book.)

Here at Control Your Cash we never, ever want to be part of that incestuous clan of personal finance bloggers who spend undue time patting each other on the back and telling each other what a great job they’re doing. You know where to find such, if you want: in the comments section of pretty much every other personal finance site in existence. That mutual bootlicking is overdone, and contributes nothing of benefit. Even worse, it tells the non-bloggers – i.e., the overwhelming majority of you – that there exists a clique that they’re not a part of. We don’t pull that kind of nonsense here, which is why we disabled comments months ago and have yet to regret it. If you want to say something to us, keep it brief and tweet at us @CYCash.

Still, there are a few other personal finance sites that we think are awesome. One in particular is Timeless Finance, whose founder once told us politely but unambiguously that he wasn’t interested in submitting to the Carnival of Wealth. But he came around. They always do. Which is why we’re leading off this week’s CoW with his inaugural submission.

When other personal finance bloggers write about frugality, it usually ends up saving pennies per hour. When Joe Wood at Timeless Finance does it, it saves him $134 per hour. All the homemade detergent and double coupons in the world can’t accomplish what Joe did when he recently got a boastful flight retailer to essentially comp his and his girlfriend’s trip from Toronto to Edmonton.

What were we thankful for last week? Our Canadian submitters, whose schedules saved this from being a thin carnival indeed. Mich at Beating the Index is back with a detailed analysis of the merger of 2 energy semi-titans: Spartan Oil and Pinecrest Energy. Mich sees the new company rivaling notorious income stock Crescent Point, which has profitable oil plays through the Great Plains/Prairies (depending on which side of the 49th you’re on.)

Neal Frankle isn’t Canadian, but he is back with a new and vital post on Wealth Pilgrim (which boasts a fancy new logo, too.) He’s writing to the 90% of you who hate your jobs and by extension, a significant portion of your lives. Yeah, you can’t leave. You have too much vested. Your family depends on your paycheck. You don’t want to risk your fortunes in an unforgiving job market (i.e. are scared.) Any rationalization you want. If, on the other hand, you’re willing to listen, Neal has an out for you. He explains that you don’t have to despise your contributions to the Gross National Product and all the time and effort associated with doing such. Life doesn’t have to suck, and acknowledging the truth of that assertion is the first step.

A post so good that it deserves no commentary. PKamp3 at DQYDJ.net has cold reality for the dimmer among you who insist that health care is too important to be left to the market.

Go ask our Canadian friends what it’s like to wait 10 months for elective surgery. Those who aren’t crossing the border for routine appendectomies, that is. PKamp3 makes an argument that we’ve been making for years – if health care is so vital that only politicians can be entrusted to deliver it, then why don’t we nationalize food, which is even more critical?  (It’s a facetious argument. Please don’t take it on its surface.)

A new submitter this week, Nick at Making It In Today’s Economy, has a $25 monthly unlimited data and voice plan. How did he do it? Read the post, most of which involves paying for a phone upfront instead of getting a “free” or “discounted” one from a provider. (We wrote about this a while ago. The prices have changed, but the strategy still applies.)

Some wags at The New York Times think that you only need to save up to 16% of your earnings to guarantee yourself a cushy retirement. And there’s nothing you can take to the bank quite like a number concocted by a journalist. Free Money Finance says 16% is, well, a start. Make incremental differences in several realms, and you’ll be rich before you…well, not before you know it, but before you otherwise would have been.

New submitter Moyo Mamora is competent, debonair, and inspiring, and if you don’t believe us, then read his self-penned description underneath his photo on his site. Moyo wants you to spend less, and shows some fairly straightforward methods for doing so.

If there’s anything more fascinating than the kitchen setup of Harry Campbell at Your PF Pro, we have no idea what it would be:

As longtime readers may already know, I’m gradually upgrading the appliances in my kitchen to stainless steel.  The only items that still need to be updated are my electric range oven and dishwasher.

Here at Control Your Cash, we have a Bosch 300 series oven. Isn’t that exciting? Wait until you hear about our vegetable crisper, too. Also there’s a Brita filtration system, an off-brand toaster and…there appear to be a couple of cat toys on the floor, too. No, wait. One of them was a scorpion. A dead one, fortunately.

Michael at Financial Ramblings thinks health savings accounts are dandy. You don’t have to choose one through your employer, either.

We have our own reasons for hating minimalists (“Stuff is less important than experiences. Even if that stuff eases or enriches your life. I’m so much better than you for rationalizing this way.”) Andrew at 101 Centavos has his own, and they include a new candidate for CoW Line of the Year:

Ditch the TV and spend more time doing meaningful, soul-nourishing activities like blogging about ditching the TV.

This indirectly hearkens to the CYC mantra: Buy assets, sell liabilities; otherwise known as the only way to build lasting wealth. It isn’t Buy nothing, sell everything. That’s the Mother Teresa wealth-building scheme, and you should see how she lived.

2/3 of the Evolution Finance troika rounds out this week’s truncated but not diminished CoW. First, from Liana Arnold at Card Hub, mobile gift cards. Yes, standard gift cards are technically mobile as it is, but she means gift cards that purely digital. Liana says that one drawback to digital cards is that “a physical card is more appropriate when exchanging gifts in person”, which indirectly brings us to our 2011 recommendation for the ultimate Christmas gift.

John Kiernan at Wallet Blog introduces us to a company, CloudeyeZ, that claims to monitor the sale of stolen credit card data. In real time, no less. Get your card stolen, or your number and signature compromised (as you do whenever you buy something in a retail store), and CloudeyeZ could give you the opportunity to find out about it as it’s happening.

Did you know we’re on Investopedia, too? Every single day, it seems. We’re also on ProBlogger. And we’ll be back here with a new Anti-Tip every day, new posts Wednesday and Friday, and a new CoW Monday. Chow for niao.